Pierre Omidyar: 6 ways social media has become a direct threat to democracy

While it’s hard to believe that helping strangers connect through the Internet was ever a radical idea, when I started eBay 22 years ago, it felt more like a social experiment than a business endeavor.

Back then, online commerce was a new and wild frontier.I believed in our mission to empower people to conduct private trade on the Internet, but there were unforeseeable challenges lurking deep in those uncharted waters.

I had a lot to learn, and I felt a deep responsibility to help build an accountable and sustainable new industry — a weight that the leaders of today’s evolving social media industry shoulder as…